The Ultimate Guide to Podcasting

A comprehensive guide for podcasters to setup their own podcast, submit it to iTunes and other directories and integrate it into their blog. Additional resources to audio editing, content, related conferences, books and tools that make things easier or save cost are also included.

This guide is for people who have a podcast or think about starting one and NOT for listeners to podcasts. There are good guides for podcast audience available, for example: The podcast listeners guide by Mathew Honan. You can also check out Apple iTunes, PodcastAlley.com, Digg Podcasts or any of the other podcast directories available on the internet.

Podcasting – once reserved for technical types or those with the financial backing to hire a podcasting specialist – has become mainstream and is no longer limited to geeks and early adopters. With this popularity and concurrent availability of tools, it has become easier to publish podcasts (although it is still not as easy as configuring a VCR).

Thanks to over 100 million iPods sold and the improvements to software and tools to make access and consumption of podcasts easier for regular people contribute to a steady growth of people who tune in to podcasts on a regular basis, which is soon reaching double digit percentages of the US population.

The increasing popularity of podcasting has fueled the number of available podcasts and the competition for audience share. Just having a podcast is no longer enough to attract listeners or engage subscribers.

Learn more about setting up your own podcast and promoting it on the internet and integrate it with your existing blog (if you don’t have one yet, create one, even if it is just for the podcast itself).

Check out the “The Ultimate Guide to Podcasting“

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Laws Every Blogger and Webmaster in the U.S. Needs to Know

Blogging has become a veritable land mine of potential legal issues. This resource covers (in plain language) what a webmaster needs to know about paid post disclosure, deep linking, thumbnails, stolen content, domain names, private data, comment liability, tax law, newsletters, journalist shield laws, and user-generated content liability *cough*.

The Laws
1. Whether to Disclose Paid Posts
2. Is Deep Linking Legal
3. The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails
4. Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content
5. Domain Name Trademark Issues
6. Handling Private Data About Your Readers
7. Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
8. The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
9. Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
10. Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
11. Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
12. Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws

Thanks for the list Akiva Directory

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Dude, what can I do to help?

When was the last time you gave something to someone? You have a talent. I don ’t know what it is. Maybe you are a great designer. Maybe you are a CSS guru or a PHP pundit. Maybe you are a marketing genius or have the gift of gab. Whatever it is, you have something to offer. When was the last time you offered it?

When was the last time you said …

 “Dude, what can I do to help? “

Nice post by SEO-SCOOP that reminds us that money is not everything and that giving for free and help somebody can make a change and also tends to come back to you in unexpected ways when you are the least prepared for it (in a good way). You don’t have to be a religious man to understand this principle.

You might think that this is all hogwash in this world where money reigns and power corrupts. Just try it once, just for the fun of it.

You might be in for a surprise.

Cheers!

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The Dark Side Of Affiliate Marketing – A Real Life Witch Hunt

A detailed report about a witch hunt to bring down some affiliate trackback spammers, the methods they used to disguise their origin and how they deceived users, affiliate networks and spam fighters alike.

Sneaky redirects, gambit like tactics with a scape goat in Asia and how scum seems to attract each other. Scumbags always seem to hunt in packs. But that means that when caught, casualties are high and not just single individuals what explains why the news ofter report of the dissolving of a criminal ring rather than the capture of a single criminal.

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Eight Internet Marketing Blog Lists – Covering over 500 Blogs

If you are looking for Blogs to the various types of internet marketing there are several ways to find them.

Blog search engines like Technorati are a good source to discover blogs. Also blog directories can be a good source, but to be honest, there are so much blog directories out there that you will have a hard time finding one that has a good selection of internet marketing related blogs, let alone categoriezed by subject.

Here are some additional blog listings by topic:

Search Marketing

1. Search Marketing Blogs List by Lee Odden – Over 300 Blogs to Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

2. SEO Blogs and News Portals

3. Search Engine Marketing/PPC Blogs

 Affiliate Marketing

4. Affiliate Marketing Blogs List by SuperAff.com

5. Bumpzee Affiliate Marketing Social Network and Blogs – List of included Blogs

6. Affiliate Marketing, Contextual Advertising and Affiliate Networks Blogs at Cumbrowski.com

7. AffiliateMarketing Buzz – Aggregated Feeds. See List of included Blogs to the right 

Internet Marketing (Email Marketing, Web Analytics, Marketing in General etc.) 

8. Internet Marketing Blogs at Cumbrowski.com

Plenty of Blogs to explore. If you are more into Podcasts and Video, check the Resources here.

Random Notes On Blogging

A funny list (if you are a Blogger) of rules, facts, thoughts and opinions to blogging by Hugh Macleod at GapingVoid.com.

Lets check the first 5 of 41 items on that list.

1. The First Rule of Blogging: “Blogs don’t write themselves.” It’s the hardest and most frustrating part of professionally helping others to blog.

2. Most bloggers I have met I would describe as smart, decent, passionate people. This includes bloggers that I don’t particularly like on a personal level. I have yet to meet a blogger who I would describe as a “Thoroughbred Scumbag”.

3. Blogging is an art, same as any other method of self-expression. Some are better at it than others.

4. Stay as honest as you can, for as long as you can. Once you cross the line it’s hard to go back.

5. A lot of serious bloggers became so because frankly, they had too much time on their hands. And often there were good reasons for that.

hilarious!

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Trackback Spammer Exploits Security Hole at Stanford.edu

Carsten Cumbrowski over at SearchEngineJournal.com shows and explains in great detail how a clever spammer exploits a security hole at the plato.stanford.edu website to trick bloggers via trackback spam that is almost undetectable, even by human eyes.

The Spammer was so clever that at it is impossible to determine that it is spam at first glance. It looks so real.
The exploits were not fixed by the affected sites yet, but the sites were contacted and take action hopefully very soon.

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